Yeah, it’s baffling to me, because politicians love power.
It's hard to have power when a few wealthy people can just fund a primary challenge if you get out of line.
Our staffing is okay, but RTO is burning us out since it's a more rural hospital. I have two days week where I only see virtual clients, and it's a wasted hour commute plus traffic. I'm having to use a lot of sick leave for OB appointments since my doctor is close to home, not work. I wonder if I can push for RA since it's temporary.
If we are going to fire a group of people...
The classic meeting to discuss "how we are all too busy to even be having these meetings, but are not actually planning to change things." My favorite.
My old mentor was the PTSD section chief at her VAMC. Her parting wisdom was "for the love of god, stay away from anything supervisory" as her entire life is what you described over and over.
Two step rule, so $5-10k ballpark.
1000000000%
Yikes. Almost all of the people assigned to be a REACH VET coordinator didn’t ask or choose to be in that role, but have had to take it on due to job descriptions that require us to be involved with suicide prevention and/or suicide prevention staff shortages. I know it’s a nuisance, but don’t take it out on the providers who are assigned to that role without any choice.
I can have some due sympathy for those forced into the position.
1000%. My former VA mentor told me the same thing. He was a lifer, but a lot had changed in the past 10-15 years, mostly for the bad.
Agreed. Plus, a bit of gallows humor on my part.
Ok. But... "PTSD Section Chief" is...nothing. Lets be honest. I mean, is that even middle management? The title literally seems made up. And, 'section?" Get real. I've never seen anything called a "section" in my lifetime. This is 1940s nonsense. Its 2025. No one talks like that anymore.
Have you worked in corporate America? That is exactly how it works. In fact, there are more layers of middle management. CEO, president, senior VP, associate VP, senior director, director, associate director, manager, associate manager, etc.
I feel like you're trying to do a @Fan_of_Meehl shtick right here but he's often imitated never duplicated
Here we have a psychologist Program Manager over the PTSD Clinic. Not sure if that's what a PTSD Section Chief is. Maybe at a bigger hospital network they have multiple PTSD clinics and there is someone over all of them. All I can say is that dealing with PTSD-related issues (assessment/diagnosis, treatment, managing co-morbidities) is a helluva thing at VA these days.
Everywhere as part of the FLOW initiative (AKA people get discharged from MH). It's actually the only metric being used for the FLOW initiative, which makes perfect sense because it has nothing to do with FLOW.
I had no idea the two were connected. All we're doing for FLOW is awkwardly secure messaging/calling patients we haven't seen in forever to let them know they're being discharged from MHC back to PC. Then we have to explain what that means. I understand it conceptually. It has just been a mess. The PCPs hate it. It's only appropriate for a handful of patient. It requires the providers to reach out individually to each person. It's not been smooth so far.
What an incredibly efficient way to utilize providers’ time.
Yeah, it's not how I would have done it. No one I've contacted has responded so far.
The more and more I work on the front lines of MH care with veterans, the more and more I've come to regard the symptom self-report measures we're mandated to use with them (PCL, PHQ, GAD7) as, generally, utterly useless wastes of time and energy. People know how to circle higher rather than lower numbers next to cited symptoms.
Referring to travel pay stipend? This seemed absolutely out of control and mostly uncalled for years ago. Is it even worse now? I am all for the rural farm boy drafted some years ago....but this stuff? Get real.
Probably not, I would say, actually. But it certainly has something to do with who they largely recruited 40 years ago. Not to mention who they managed to recruit at various other low periods (late 90s, 2010s?). I mean, in 1980, 81, 82, 83, who hell is joining the Army? And why? They even made a joke movie about them, for goodness sakes. Literally underachievers, poor health, or bad choice young men. But they came from all walks of life back then. Today, the idea that your screw-up son will be "fixed up right" by boot camp and some structure is outdated (rightfully so) and not welcome by the US armed forces. But not so back then.
I wouldn’t say recently - they’ve been ok with presidents waging wars abroad without a war declaration for decades
Yeah, leaving VA can be a bit jarring at first, especially depending on how long you've been there, but I suspect you'll quickly come to appreciate the changes.
Congrats! Where’s the new gig?
Not much more than normal here. But it was bad to begin with for psychologists.
Literally, 20 MH staff (Psychologist, Psychiatrists, SWs) have quit at my local VAMC and affiliated CBOCs since March. There have been 3 MH staff hires (so I'm told) during this time...and of course they have not been cleared yet to work. Wait times increased, services have been cut, BHIP teams overwhelmed. Moral? Motivation? In the toilet. An entire IOP program is at risk of being shutdown here. While it may not be this bad at other places...even close to that is bad enough. And 100% more layoffs are coming. Like, 100%.
A group private practice.
